Fun(ds) and Games – Are Your Political Funding Donations Above Board?
If you follow the many goings on in British politics, you’ll know that Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has recently been in the spotlight over whether he should have declared a £5 million donation ahead of the UK’s 2024 general elections.
Farage claims the money was for his personal security, not political campaigning, and thus did not need to be declared. Others aren’t convinced. It’s all a bit “he-said, she-said” at the moment, and the truth is likely hidden somewhere in the middle.
US President Donald Trump, no stranger to controversy at the best of times, has also received his fair share of criticism over the funding of his 2024 presidential campaign – not least of which was a $300 million donation by Elon Musk.
Here at home, with our own local government elections just two weeks away, much attention is on the donations various candidates have received from businesses – and specifically whether they’ve been accurately declared in accordance with the Political Funding Act (PFA).
The Act started out in 2021 as the Political Party Funding Act, legislated to regulate how our political parties are funded, but was renamed in 2024 to reflect that it also started to scrutinise the private funding of individual candidates.
On its debut, the PPFA fundamentally reshaped South Africa’s political finance framework. For almost 30 years previously, there were virtually no checks on who made party donations and how much was contributed.
Parliamentary leader Mr Vincent George Smith stated at the time the Bill was first brought forward that it was “about building a Nation where the Rand never reigns superior to the will of the people… [and that] those with big bank balances, or who have easy access to party bosses, never usurp the will and interests of the general electorate or party supporters who might not be as moneyed.”
Essentially the Act:
Revised the distribution methodology for allocating public funds to political parties.
Prohibited direct cash contributions from foreign sources.
Established a R15 million annual ceiling on contributions from any individual donor to a single party.
Mandated public disclosure for all political contributions exceeding R100,000.
In August last year, however, President Ramaphosa increased those disclosure thresholds to R200,000, with an annual cap of R30 million. The problem with that is, while it may encourage higher donation volumes, it also risks diluting financial transparency by shielding under-threshold funding from public view.
As Anthony Butler writes in the Business Day, this has now “made it easier for large donors to give more money, more privately, to the parties best placed to reward them.”
He goes on to say that “Sceptics believe reform is unlikely because the weaknesses in this law are not merely administrative oversights waiting to be fixed. Thresholds, they believe, will surely just be periodically renegotiated by the very Parliament that wrote the ineffectual law, in whatever direction currently suits the biggest parties.”
One of these sceptics is non-governmental organisation My Vote Counts. They believe there should not be a disclosure threshold at all because, in the interests of transparency and accountability, voters should know who financially supports political parties and independent candidates, regardless of the amount.
However, while that’s likely a popular and valid school of thought, the Act and its thresholds are currently the only form of funding regulation we have, and, with political parties scaling up their fundraising operations ahead of the 4 November local government elections, there are already discrepancies:
A key finding by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) in its report for the first quarter of the 2026/27 financial year was that over R15.27 million in donations to the ANC was excluded from the R116.78 million in fully compliant party disclosures.
It identified “many [other] compliance matters” including:
Omission of required dual disclosures from both donor and recipient.
Incomplete or missing formal statutory declarations.
Absence of verifiable banking records and transaction proof.
Non-compliance with statutory reporting deadlines and supporting documentation requirements.
It was quick to add, however, that this didn’t necessarily mean the donations themselves were unlawful, rather that the issue is with “compliance with the statutory disclosure and verification requirements applicable to political funding.”
Political analyst Siyabonga Ntombela expressed scepticism over these lapses, describing them as “strange” for a governing party with three decades of administrative experience. “It is either genuine human error or a deliberate act to conceal information and mislead the IEC and the public,” he said.
The ANC has been ordered to address the compliance deficiencies or risk further regulatory action.
The question I now have is whether the same care and attention is being applied to the organisations making the donations.
Are they, for example, innocent or complicit if their donation is not disclosed by the receiving party? How much responsibility do they bear for what happens to their donations after they’ve made them? And is anyone looking at the motivation behind the donation? In other words, is there an expected benefit for the business (i.e., a lucrative government contract) in return for its financial support?
I’m not the only one with doubts.
The advocacy lead of My Vote Counts, Noxolo Mfocwa, believes that large donations could give donors the perceived “right” to exert influence over a party once it is in government. As an alternative, she says donors interested in advancing democracy as a whole could instead put their money into the existing Multi-Party Democracy Fund.
In a recent article for the Cape Times, Wendy Jasson da Costa argues that the IEC’s disclosures raise questions about whether it’s easy for voters to see the connections between donors who appear to be separate but are actually connected.
As an example, she highlighted a finding by My Vote Counts that two declared donations to the DA came from two separate sources, but which are both connected to Capitec founder Michiel le Roux. Technically, these donations comply with the law because they came from separate legal entities, but My Vote Counts believes they highlight a gap in the system when it comes to connected companies and common ownership.
The problem is not only limited to business organisations. There are also concerns about individual donors listed only by their initials or surname, making it nearly impossible for voters to discover exactly who is behind a donation.
My Vote Counts says voters should not have to conduct their own investigations to establish who is ultimately behind major political donations.
It seems clear that we as voters need to have a long think about not only which party we want to support, but also who has an interest in influencing its policies and decisions.
Money in politics always leaves a trail, and the line between strategic investment and democratic distortion appears uncomfortably thin.
As we approach our local government elections, corporate boards have to acknowledge that political funding is no longer a quiet, consequence-free transaction conducted behind closed doors. Every business leader considering a contribution must answer one fundamental question: when your company’s donation is made public, will it be seen as a legitimate exercise in civic participation, or a down payment on political influence?